Pastor disaster is always just around the corner…or is it?

A staple of the pastoral ministry is the ubiquity of doomsdayers, naysayers, and highly negative soothsayers. To wit:

Epidemic of forced pastoral terminations!

Thousands of pastors leaving ministry each month!

Depression rampant among pastors!

Pastors are overworked, underpaid, drowning in a sea of student debt!

Average tenure of pastors is short, and unsweet!

Toxic churches driving pastors to quit ministry, commit suicide!

There is some truth in all of these but a steady diet of such things is unhealthy for those called to the pastoral ministry. From the get-go thirty-five years ago my life was filled with warnings, alarms, and predictions about what a difficult life it was to be the pastor of a church. Well-meaning, grizzled veterans of the pastoral ministry warned me about recalcitrant deacons, members who would be hard on my wife and kids, low pay, long hours.

Yeah, thanks for the encouragement, brethren.

Since I’m semi-retired now, having survived several decades as a pastor without being forcibly terminated, without being driven into clinical depression, without kids or spouse being abused, and without being hopelessly impoverished, I thought I would take time to make a factual assessment of all this. So, I left my driveway and visited the first 100 churches I came across and interviewed the pastor. Here’s what I found:

1. The number of senior pastors who have been at their church for a decade or longer was almost half of all the churches.

Who would have thunk that? What happened to the old average longevity of eighteen months that I have heard innumerable times? It never was. Imagine that. Forty-four of the one hundred churches I visited has a pastor who had been at the church for a decade or more, long enough to see little children grow up and graduate high school. Long enough to see pimply-faced middle schoolers graduate high school and college, get married, and have kids. Nothing makes pastoral ministry easier than the accumulation of years of service that widens and deepens relationships in the church.

2. Pastors and churches are mostly in stable relationships.

Not much evidence of the thousands of ministers leaving the ministry for less stressful, higher paying fields. Only a single church had a pastor who left the ministry for another vocation, although some had pastors who died, retired, or moved to other ministry positions.

3. Pastors weren’t underpaid or overworked, generally.

Most of the 100 churches were average size for the SBC, 75-150 in attendance, and the pastor had a package that averaged around $57,000 annually. Not too shabby. Some made less. Some made more. As a group, this wasn’t an underpaid group. The great majority of the brethren had a work week that was reasonable, maybe a median of about 50 hours per week. As I asked more specific questions about the work week, I got the sense that many of the brethren knew how to squeeze in personal time to a work day and/or take a half-day or day off when needed. The average pastor work week was about the same as American workers as a whole. No doomsday here.

4. The number of depressed pastors was, well, depressing.

At about every fourth church the pastor admitted to some kind of mental illness. At about every eighth church the pastor admitted to a clinical diagnosis of a mental health condition. Depression is the likely and most prevalent culprit here. If there is a warning, this is the place it is found.

5. An overwhelming majority of the pastors denied that being in the ministry had a negative effect on their family.

From the old scare stories I had heard over the decades I figured that surely more than 20 or so of the pastors would disclose through clinched teeth that the pastoral ministry was a net negative on their wife and kids, but, nope, 79 denied that was so. I would speculate that truck drivers, teachers, law enforcement people, and a lot of other occupational groups have more than 20% with a negative family impact. The number of brethren who said that their congregation was very considerate and loving towards their wife and kids was surprisingly large.

6. Only a handful failed to state that they felt privileged to be a pastor.

Can you get 93 out of 100 pastors to agree on anything? I found exactly that many who agreed that whatever the difficulties and challenges, it was a privilege to be a pastor.

Perhaps they were speaking ministerially…or perhaps they were being honest.

Suggestion for my ministerial colleagues, especially younger ones: Ignore most of the doomsday stuff you hear. If your minister’s conference is a gripefest every Monday, then find another one that is more uplifting, encouraging, and supportive.

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About William Thornton

William Thornton is a lifelong Southern Baptist and semi-retired pastor who served churches in South Carolina and Georgia. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia and Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. You may find him occasionally on Twitter @wmgthornton.

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Bill Payne

Could it be that a lot of men who become pastors were never really called by God to be pastors?

In time, a proportion leaves for various reasons. The data (and you can follow the links an reread my article) is that there is longevity in pastorates and job satisfaction that would surprise many who read only the scare headlines.

November 7, 2015 9:25 am

Andy

And, just because a man begins his career as a pastor and retires as something else doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t called by God to be a pastor for a time…

I’d question the quality of data generated by questions to pastors like “Do you feel privilegd to be a pastor?” Saying “no” to that would almost be like denying the faith.

November 7, 2015 11:13 am

Adam Blosser

Good stuff, William. People can be difficult to deal with (including pastors). We are all sinful, and learning to live together in unity is a challenge. I grow tired of the doomsday stuff concerning pastoral ministry. Are there challenges I did not anticipate prior to becoming a pastor? Of course! But I expect that is true of a lot of occupations. I am thankful for the opportunity to pastor the church God has entrusted to me.

William…I’m glad you made the trip around to the 100 places. You may have proven that folks are more interested in talking about the doomsday stuff rather than the actual reality of their “plight” of being born again. After all, doesn’t a man (or men) leading within the congregation find the work of the ministry a “good thing”!

Maybe it is ok to have joy, or edify others after all, even in the midst of the doomsday or negative crowds.

Interesting post, William, and I appreciate the work you put into it. Given that, as well as the eye-opening results, this material deserves a larger audience.

I think many people know a church who abuses their pastors to one extent or another and that lends itself to the reports that such churches are more prevalent than they really are. Hearing such things, as well as hearing from pastors who seem to talk about being a pastor as though it were the most difficult job in the world, can be discouraging to young men who otherwise sense a call to pastoral ministry.

A proper view to Christian ministry in general should be expressed with realistic expectations of the difficulties as well as the rewards. That is to say that while pastors have a particularly intensive role in Christian ministry, all Christians are called to ministry and should be instructed in the joy of enduring the difficulties they will inevitably encounter in fulfilling whatever their particular calling entails.

Hopefully young men who sense a call to pastoral ministry will receive instruction early on regarding discerning their call. Their gifts and situation may be better employed in missions, education, evangelism, counseling, administration (from full-time leadership to committee members), media production (publishing, video, graphics, audio) or some other kind of communications, child care, property management and services (construction, maintenance, security, etc), hospitality, financing (planning or providing), health care, prayer, worship (music, technical services, congregational assistance)… the list goes on. And people’s roles can (and often should) change over time. I daresay, one test of a calling to pastoral ministry should not be that they have the tenacity to pursue it in the face of falsely believing that it will necessarily be detrimental to their families for working 120 hours a week and only being paid minimum wage for 40, certainly pit them against sour deacons whose sole purpose it is to fire them for preaching the truth, and probably land them in the psych ward for severe depression. A more realistic view of pastoral ministry is a far better test, and a sound, biblical teaching on calling is a better consideration.

got it…I think the statistics speak for themselves to a great degree. As Jim stated, its about getting the facts and reality of what your getting into. Ministry in and of itself is a calling that the Holy Spirit expects to be done within the family, and by the family. It does come with its highs and lows, and many times, the men that are attempting to lead might be better served from a position of being ministered to….and avoid the disaster of being tossed around by a group of immature believers, especially if he is going it alone.

Thanks for your honesty there. I totally bought that you actually talked to 100 pastors having not checked the links at the bottom. It’s still a good article and I appreciate that you compiled the stats for it.

November 9, 2015 9:54 pm

Tarheel

Crude literary device?

Honestly it seems like deception to me – you certainly gave the impression that you did this – by saying “I left my driveway…”

Not to change the subject entirely….Tarheel, I think we did see a very crude literary device in Missouri. The media school professor asking for some brute force to remove reporters in a public area. Wow, where has free speech actually landed at public Universities these days. The mood of a nation continues in a downward spiral. Sad,…so very sad.

I guess I take a different tack on this. Of course, you guys are right and the ministry is not a 100% disaster and pastors and not all unhappy. But there are a LOT of unhappy pastors, a lot of men struggling to get by, a lot of men with unhappy marriages, with churches that are not rewarding – there are men who are discouraged, depressed and wrung out.

I don’t know how many, but I think it is a significant statistic. I don’t know how these questions were answered, but I can say that I consider it a privilege to be a minister while at the same time saying that it is not always a joyful thing. There is almost a dismissive tone to this discussion and to the stats offered.

There are a lot of unhappy, struggling men in pulpits. I know this to be the case. No, we aren’t all unhappy – maybe not even a majority. I’m not really quarreling with the stats. But the problem of men dying on the vine in the ministry is REAL and simply painting them as the minority is not going to do anything to help them.

When I saw the stat that 1 in 8 clergy had been diagnosed as having a mental illness, not just in a funk on Mondays but having been to a physician to seek some relief, I thought that was a staggering proportion.

I also thought that if almost half of pastors had been at their church for a decade, that was far more than I would have thought from listening to the brethren.

I don’t know if there is a regional component to any of this either. I tell you something else. In Iowa, if you do the poll in May, or August, or if you do it in late January or early February, you might get 2 different results.

I am with Dave on this. I have been a part of “forced resignation”, at a church that had done so to the last 3 or 4 pastors. While I am not perfect and make mistakes, I don’t think I can take all of the blame for that one. But I will take some. There are some brutal brutal churches out there, who eat pastors. I think this is a much more serious thing than many here make it out to be.

I think it’s fine to be realistic regarding the possibility of bad things happening. Indeed, many seminarians or young pastors are too idealistic when approaching their calling. They may even hear about how horrible it is to be a pastor, but think to themselves how great a leader they are that they will be able to go into a bad church of 50 members and turn it into a healthy megachurch in five years.

There are some churches that aren’t spiritually healthy. There are some pastors that aren’t spiritually healthy. Interestingly, if these young bucks get hired into a church that has a bad pastor on staff or some unregenerate deacons, they’ll learn quickly what it’s like.

But there should be a reasonable expectation for a healthy, average church. It’s not going to be perfect, but there should be plenty of opportunity for good ministry; and much of that good ministry will be handling whatever imperfections there are in the church, for we know there are no perfect churches.

For a young pastor to have this realistic expectation, he should know that his greatest joy will be to see God work among his people in spite of them and in spite of his own weaknesses. Being able to find joy in serving God when your calling is to do spiritual battle is what is important. If the saints in your flock treat you well, it’s a bonus.

But I also see another pattern. It is wise to have external confirmation regarding one’s calling. There are some who bull right ahead into pulpit ministry with every warning thrown at them that the ministry outside the pulpit will bite them, and the temptation is to assume that they must be called anyway. However, there are some who wisely wait on outside confirmation of their call who perceive warnings as a lack of confirmation who otherwise have the patient strength of God’s wisdom to handle the uncertain challenges that would come their way. Many of these never make it into pastoral ministry when they may otherwise make solid, steadfast pastors.